Construction Accident – Fall From Scaffold

Summary of “Construction Site Accident”

Construction Accident – Fall From Scaffold

A friend came to me and basically told me the day where he was chipping concrete underneath a bridge during a construction project and unfortunately, he was approximately ten feet high, he lost his balance and he fell to the ground onto a pile of rocks actually and he sustained significant damage to his low back. And the question he had was that I got injured on the job, is there anything I can do? He’d heard of workers’ comp cases and you can’t really go after your employer because of workers’ comp, but after investigating the circumstances we found out that the project was a State run project, and that he was simply a subcontractor working for the State.So I instituted an action against the State, and after an investigation was performed, determined that the scaffold that my client was on, wasn’t erected in a safe manner. There are laws in New York State that require the general contractor of the job to adequately and safely erect a scaffold and make sure it’s safe for the workers that are on it, for the subcontractors that are on it. And in this case, it was determined that there were actually no railings surrounding the scaffold and as a result, my client lost his balance and fell to the ground.

It turned out that what he thought was just a sore back led to a significant low back surgery, a fusion surgery, where numerous levels of his lower spine were fused together which prevented him from doing any type of activity, work activity into the future. So the failure of the State and the contractor to provide a safe work environment prevented him from earning a living.

We went to Court for approximately a year and a half, these things take time and the whole time, my client was without pretty much an income and he had no money. And being a friend of mine as well, it was very frustrating to see him being frustrated through the whole process. Basically he used his body for his livelihood. His physicality was what made him who he was. He wasn’t much of a school person, I’ll tell you that. He wasn’t college educated, but he made a good living as a laborer and that’s what he was good at, and that was taken away from him.

So what we did is put the trust and faith into the jury system and into the Court system, and when it was all was said and done, I would say days before the trial actually started, we received a settlement from the defendant, and this isn’t a settlement for sympathy because that’s not what my client wanted. We simply wanted to reimburse my client for the harm and losses he sustained as the result of the negligence of the defendant. That’s all we were asking for from the beginning. We wanted the lost income that he sustained in the past. We wanted the lost income he sustained and will sustain into the future. We had a loss of medical bills and future medical bills that he owed. That’s what the defendants ended up paying us to kind of right this wrong, and send a clear message to the defendants and other contractors out there in New York State that they can’t just provide a work environment. They have to provide a safe work environment.

The most rewarding aspect of this specific case was to see a friend of mine, and also a client, receive a settlement that put him in a position where, it doesn’t make him any better physically, but at least the financial strains that he was going through are no longer there.

Client Thanks

I would like to thank your firm for representing our family on behalf of my late husband. This whole process was, at times, difficult for us and sometimes painful. But, we were always in good hands as Brian and Maria are two of the hardest working and sincerest people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. They did a tremendous job.